The Kee to Bala has delivered, once again, bringing an epic performance to its near century-old stage, in the little town of Bala, ON, and proving itself to be one of the best places to catch a concert.
On Wednesday, June 11, Billy Corgan and The Machines of God rocked the Kee with their Return to Zero tour.
And it was awesome.
Corgan’s better known band, The Smashing Pumpkins, made their Kee debut in the summer of 2024, as a surprise bombshell announcement following Live Nation’s takeover of the venue. That show sold out immediately, with re-sale tickets going for $700 and up. As a long-time Pumpkins fan, I was absolutely heartbroken not to have scored tickets – but as a broke single lady, paying $700 to be a part of it wasn’t really an option. I did consider sitting outside on the lawn just to hear it, but in the end decided it might just break my heart that much more to be so close, yet still so out of reach.
When I first heard Billy Corgan would be playing the Kee again this summer, but without the Pumpkins, I, like many others I’m sure, was intrigued, but unsure of what to expect. Would it be Corgan and an acoustic guitar doing his cover of Landslide and maybe some SP songs? Was he releasing a solo album and touring in support of all new material?
I think the fact that many people were in the same boat as me in terms of not knowing what this tour meant, at first anyway, is why tickets didn’t sell out immediately – and I was still able to get one at a reasonable rate, even after they were first released. The fact that the Kee was just the third stop on the tour, and that the show was on a Wednesday night, likely also kept it from selling out completely, but to be honest, I think mostly people just didn’t know what they were missing.
Being a huge Smashing Pumpkins – and Corgan – fan for almost three decades now, I was stoked to get a ticket regardless, but admittedly I did keep checking the internet, and especially social media sites, for updates on what to expect. As details were revealed, including the setlist, I got more and more excited for what was to come: a full, four-piece band (two guitars, a bass and drums), playing electric/close-to-original versions of Smashing Pumpkins’ songs from select albums (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness; Machina/The Machines of God; Machina II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music; and their latest release, 2024’s Aghori Mhori Mei), with Corgan of course remaining at the helm.
L.A. based rockers Return to Dust have had the privilege of opening for the Machines of God on this tour. With their long-haired, head-banging performance, rife with guitar riffs and powerful vocals, they were definitely a great fit to get fans in the mood for the show to come, and reminiscent of the 90’s grunge era the Pumpkins were a part of.
As a long time Pumpkins fan, but also a fan of music in general, I was not in the least bit disappointed by the performance or song selection Corgan and The Machines of God put on. In fact, I was thrilled.
They played a full two-hour set, opening with tracks Le Deux Machina, Glass, and Heavy Metal Machine from the second Machina album, before getting into Where Boys Fear to Tread from the Mellon Collie double album, and then Pentagrams from the recent Aghori Mhori Mei. They continued on, alternating through tracks from the various albums, taking a pause near the end of the set only for Corgan to pretend to play an acoustic cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s Sundown, before actually performing an acoustic rendition of his own Tonight, Tonight.
My favourite tracks from the show included Porcelina of the Vast Oceans, Muzzle, and Bodies, all from the Mellon Collie double album, as well as the encore, The Everlasting Gaze, from the first Machina album. Just so well done, and impressive to see the sounds from the albums carried forward so well with the live performance. My only disappointment – though I hesitate to call it that, because the show was truly incredible – was that I know they played longer encores with a few more songs at other venues in larger cities. But really, I can’t complain because these guys did give it their all, for a full two-hour set, and may have been bound by time given that they didn’t finish until just after midnight as it was, on a Wednesday night, in little old Bala, ON.
I’ve seen some reviews from the tour in general lamenting the lack of Jimmy Chamberlin’s more artistic and less methodical approach to drumming, and James Iha’s expert shoegaze-style guitar sound, but to me, The Machines of God performed an outstanding live set, layering their sound phenomenally, and hitting their marks like true pros. The showmanship of guitarist Kiki Wong was a great fit, and it’s easy to see why Corgan would select her, not only to perform as one of The Machines of God, but also as a touring guitarist with the Pumpkins. Even as a hetero-sexual female in the audience, I adored watching her and would have been completely captivated by her, had it not been for the fact that Corgan himself was also there, in front of my very eyes, for the first time in the 29 years since I was first entranced by him.
Rounding out The Machines of God were L.A. based session and touring drummer Jake Hayden, and shoegaze indie rocker Jenna Fournier, a.k.a. Kid Tigrrr, on bass, whose soft dreamy presence (and outfit) countered Wong’s embodiment of devilish heavy metal in a perfect symbiosis of good vs. it-feels-good-to-be-bad influences over each of Corgan’s shoulders. Corgan of course donned a trench-coat, a mainstay since the Pumpkins 1998 album Adore, though this one was silver and gave more mad-scientist vibes than his earlier Nosferatu-leaning versions of the look. The outfits and showmanship definitely added to the feeling that we were in the presence of true rock stars, or at least a band having fun with embodying that idea, and definitely added a little something to an already epic show.
The alternate band name – The Machines of God – came out of the Pumpkins’ 2000 albums “Machina/the Machines of God,” and “Machina II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music,” and follows a theme that really started to emerge on 1995’s “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” double album, where Billy Corgan first refers to himself as Zero. From what I gather through reading various articles, Zero is basically Corgan’s public persona, as his band became somewhat larger than life, and public assumptions and interpretations created a caricature of the man behind the music. From there, within the Machina albums, the storyline of Zero is furthered, as he is influenced by the voice of God he believes himself to be hearing, and renames himself from Zero to Glass, and his band to The Machines of God, as they are essentially a conduit of what Zero (now Glass) is receiving as downloads from a higher power. Even on the track Zero, from the Mellon Collie album, however, Corgan sings “I’m the face in your dreams of Glass” hinting that the concept was already at play in his mind long before the Machina albums were compiled. To delve a little further, Corgan has apparently said his experience of the writing process feels like this in a sense, as he’s sometimes unsure of where and how the songs are coming from within him.
Though the concept may be lost on some, it’s certainly not necessary to wrap your head around it to enjoy the music or the shows that Corgan and The Machines of God are bringing on this tour. That being said, I do think it’s highly relatable as a creative person, and especially as a writer myself; we often hear of musicians and other writers feeling as though they’re plucking lines from the sky, or that come to them in dreams, seemingly from somewhere outside their own psyche. Understanding this definitely adds layers of appreciation to what Corgan was going for with this tour, but as noted, is not essential to enjoying the songs, sound, or showmanship the band is delivering.
Since my first introduction to the Smashing Pumpkins’ music, they’ve always seemed to me to be these huge, beyond human entities. Probably, in part, because I was so young (about 10 years old) when I first got into them, under the influence of my older sister and some of her friends. But even the description ‘rock star’ doesn’t seem to do justice to the way I have viewed the Smashing Pumpkins, and Corgan himself, over the years. If the Arkells, as described in my previous post, are seemingly some of the most relatable, down-to-earth musicians to have reached huge levels of success in the industry (albeit more-so in Canada than the states, and maybe that’s part of the difference), the Smashing Pumpkins always seemed so out of reach to me, as both musicians and people. In fact, thinking of them as just people like everyone else is still something my brain struggles with.
It could be due, in part, to the fact that the same year I was first getting into them (1996) they were immortalized in cartoon form on one of my – and the world’s – favourite TV shows, being The Simpsons.
A couple years later (1998), I remember they visited Much Music in Toronto, ON for a show called “Intimate & Interactive,” where the station would have a band come in and play songs, be interviewed by one of the resident VJ’s, and also take questions from the audience. I was so excited, I think I even had goosebumps just knowing the band was in Toronto, despite the fact that that was still about two hours away, and at 12 years old, my mom was not driving me to the city for something like this.
But they were seemingly still so close, and I so badly wanted to call in with a question, yet I remember feeling so intimidated that they would think I was just some dumb kid. I have this vision of me, phone in hand, half dialing the number for the station, and then hanging up before going through with it, because the anxiety had gotten the better of me. Still, I sat and watched the whole thing, in awe that they were in a city so close to me (in rural Ontario terms, anyway).
I figured I would never have the chance to see them live because by the time I grew up, they wouldn’t be a band anymore. Although that didn’t end up being the case exactly, and there have been chances, here and there for me to see them as an adult, I think this Machines of God show in particular, with its focus on songs from that initial era of my familiarity with the Pumpkins, and in such an intimate venue as the Kee, was such a fitting first time for me to see Corgan and these songs performed live, and I couldn’t be happier that I finally got to do it!
